


Digging for Gold

by aurilly



Category: Corfu Trilogy - Gerald Durrell, David Blaize - E. F. Benson
Genre: Archaeology, Crossover, M/M, Nature, Pre-Frank Maddox/Theodore Stephanides, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2020-02-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:40:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22516384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurilly/pseuds/aurilly
Summary: While digging for ruins, Frank runs into Gerry and Theodore, who are digging for wildlife. The two pursuits are not quite as separate as they may seem.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3
Collections: X-Ship - The Crossover Relationship Exchange 2019





	Digging for Gold

**Author's Note:**

  * For [reine_des_corbeaux](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reine_des_corbeaux/gifts).



"We're going to town this afternoon for a bit of fun," Sanders said after breakfast. "There's room for you in the wagon."

"No, thanks," Frank replied once he'd finished the last of his disappointing scone and washed the dry crumbs down with tea. "I was planning on taking another look at the Agios Stefanos."

"We've already finished cataloguing that side of the island. There was nothing there," Eames argued. "We ruled it out definitively as lacking in academic potential."

"I haven't given up on it, and I will enjoy the stroll more than I would a day partaking in whatever mischief you have planned." 

Frank had unconsciously slipped into his most prefect-like voice, the one none of these young men—all former raggers of lower fifths some school or another—were unable to resist. A couple of them, dotted around their shabby hotel's breakfast table, blushed a bit. Frank's posture of authority also hid his own naughtiness, his shameful irrationality of emotion. For he was not going to spend the day working either, and it could be argued that the bent of his thoughts lay in quietly even more dangerous directions than those of his companions.

Perhaps he ought to go with them, he wondered for a moment. But no, such distractions had only ever served to focus him further inwards, more than solitude ever did. 

"You and your melancholic rambles," Sanders said a few minutes later, when their open-air taxi had arrived. But he, as did all the fellows on the expedition, liked Frank, despite his shaming drive for work and the low moods into which he sometimes slipped. "We will see you for dinner here, I hope?"

"Possibly," Frank replied, as cheerfully and noncommittally as could.

"Go, before Professor Allenfield catches you," Eames said, with a shooing motion. "We will cover for you if he asks any questions."

"Thanks," Frank said. "Though I don't mind if he knows. Best to own up to my whereabouts and decisions. Even if I do catch it later."

* * *

Frank stopped a few merchants and farmers passing by their suburban lodging if they were going in his direction before there was one who nodded for him to climb up onto the box of the cart with him. Frank practiced his measured but patchy modern Greek with the man as they drove through the magical spring landscape, in which birdsong almost drowned out some of the whoppers that made the driver howl with laughter. Frank's Greek, he was learning, sounded like someone resurrected from a medieval novel. 

Regardless of language, it seemed, everyone viewed Frank as an eccentric. 

"Oh no, to the left, not the right," Frank directed when the man seemed to be taking a wrong turn. 

He was met with a confused stare.

"But all the English in recent months go there. You are not the latest visitor?"

Frank had no idea what he was talking about. "No, I'm off to the beach, down the coast, past that rocky cove."

"There is nothing there."

"There is enough there for me." 

The man turned to the right, as requested, muttering something under his breath about these strange English people being the same. It was only a few more minutes before Frank spotted the beach he remembered from a few weeks ago, and asked to be let off.

"How do you get back, crazy English?" the man asked.

"I'll walk until I find someone. Or I'll sleep out in the open air," Frank said, knowing he should want the former, but holding out a little hope that the latter would be forced upon him. He had always romanticized living like a hobo for a nice, and he had come with enough water and victuals to sustain him until morning.

The man shook his head as he said goodbye, leaving Frank on a desolate but beautiful shore. Frank breathed deeply of the rich sea air, and tried to will happiness into his lungs. He thought he remembered a particularly pretty rock a little to the east. He searched around for a sturdy walking stick and set off. 

Professor Allenfield, on whose Cambridge-funded archaeological expedition Frank had come to Greece, had indeed dismissed this side of the island for its lack of relevance to the Battle of Sybota, which formed the subject of his latest book. But Frank's romantic imagination had enshrined it as a place rich with more mythological potential. He poked his stick at an ancient wall here, at a gathering of rocks there, looking for vestiges of the manmade in a landscape that nature had almost wholly conquered. 

He sat on a wide rock up a small bluff from the sea and reached into his satchel for a flask of ginger beer and a well-worn envelope. 

He'd received this letter from David over a week ago, but Frank had not yet recovered from its contents. The plain, cheap stationary that David always kept in constantly toppling stacks had already become dog-eared and finger-stained from too many readings. This, this letter, was why he'd come here today. He irrationally hoped that rereading it—despite having all but memorized it by now—in a spot as painfully beautiful as this, with the rocky shore lanced with rocks as sharp as the ones lancing his heart, might slow the dizzying swirl his soul had suffered.

In the end, it was nothing more than a clumsily obscured statement about growing up, about growing out of Frank's shadow. Anyone else would have dismissed the letter as the emptiest piffle. David must have known how keenly Frank would feel it; otherwise, he would not have talked around the thing as he had. Frank could just about picture David chewing on his pen, getting ink everywhere, agonizing over the phrasing before giving up entirely and writing whatever came into his head. 

And it frightened Frank. All of it. Not because he regretted the loss of David's hero-worship. Far from that. Gratifying as that had been for all these years, he was not such a cad as to cling to that kind of devotion. 

No, what he feared was the loss of the magnet that had kept his moral soul in such strong stead for so many years. He could see the future quite clearly, see the calm control over himself ebbing away as surely as the ebbing tide before him pulled away from the rocks below him, leaving dark, empty stretches where so recently there had been joyful bubbles.

First would come David's (perfectly welcome) ascent into his own opinions and habits. Soon afterwards would follow a livelihood in the larger world beyond the academic one Frank knew he would never leave. The would come a wife and children and the kinds of concerns that would tear him away and leave Frank lost, lacking salvation. 

Distantly, he heard a voice nearby. He absent-mindedly used the letter to wipe the tear that threatened to trickle down his tanned face. Seeing what he'd done crumpled it, for the hundredth time, and shoved it into his satchel again.

He must have been lost in thought, indeed, for the newcomers were almost upon him. A tall, graceful figure whose elegant Homburg hat and grey tweed suit contrasted with the bizarre accouterments strung about his person. Beside him walked a golden-haired boy of about eleven, who carried, if possible, even _more_ gear. Certainly more than anyone on Frank's expedition ever carried for a day's excavation.

Behind them trailed the most nonchalant and nondescript brown dog Frank had ever seen. 

"Have you been watching the babies, too?" the child asked, surprisingly, and in clear but accented Greek.

"No, I have not seen any babies about," Frank replied in kind. "Have you lost your siblings?"

The man laughed, showing perfect white teeth in his golden tanned face. "It would be a most, er, _miraculous_ birth if the children we seek were his siblings," he said in perfectly unaccented English.

"Excuse me," the child said, not quite pushing past Frank to kneel behind the rock upon which he'd been sitting and musing for the past hour. 

Frank almost failed to notice the motion, or the boy at all, for the way he found himself gaping at the man. Tall and golden-haired, with a trimmed golden beard and twinkling blue eyes full of humor, a sculptor's idealized aquiline nose, and a humble bashfulness not often found in men so startlingly handsome. The sun had just come out of a cloud to shine a helpfully pointed ray down the length of him. 

Frank felt as though he were meeting a real Greek god, though which one, of the many he told himself he didn't fancy, he could not yet decide. 

"They're still here! But gosh, they're so much bigger than last week," the boy said from somewhere in the rocks above, breaking Frank's momentary awe.

"Would you like to see?" the man said kindly, stretching out an arm to help Frank over an awkward point of the rock that only a child could easily navigate.

Frank didn't know what he might be looking for, but followed. Anything to bask in this sun. 

He followed, and then recoiled, because suddenly, there was a nest of frogs in front of him, as wriggly as anything. 

"Careful now," the man said, and pressed a steadying weight on Frank's arm. His very touch was warm and soothing. "We wouldn't want you to lose your footing."

"How long do you think they'll stay together, with their mother?" the boy asked, while Frank huddled as close to the man as his stomach could stand. Between the frogs and the churning he wanted to ignore, he suddenly wished he'd eaten a smaller breakfast. 

"This species holds on longer than others. We have a few weeks more to observe them, I think. When they do leave, it is in the most, um, curious fashion. Of all the wildlife on this island, this species has the strongest, er, _fraternal_ bonds. They leave their mother in pairs, brother with brother and sister with sister to seek adventure in the world beyond. They um, feel out the world through each other and grow into adulthood."

"And then what happens to them?" Frank asked, falling immediately into the story.

The man coughed nervously. "Well, it all goes quite well for a time, until whichever one turns out to be larger eats, you know, the smaller one in order to be free of him... Or, well, her."

"You aren't serious, Theodore!" the boy cried, and then asked, in awe, "Are you?"

"Please tell me you aren't," Frank agreed with equally boyish fervor, and out of apprehension for the metaphors that had already started to play in his mind. He did note the boy's use of the man's Christian name, confirming, to Frank's irrational and inappropriate relief, that they were not father and son. 

"Quite serious. It's most, um, most interesting." The man, Theodore, apparently, swept lightly at the mass of babies with the rounded handle of his cane, pulling them all to one side to reveal the mother, nestled in the crevice that she had nested in.

This new view of the place made Frank jump to attention as he saw for the first time what exactly this nest might be.

"Can you… Would you please move them a bit farther over?"

"What for?" the boy asked.

"I thought for a moment that underneath I saw…" He was too excited to explain, and waited until Theodore had moved the entire mass of disgusting progeny off to the side. "It is!"

"Are there insects?" the boy asked excitedly.

"No, no, these markings. Do you see? Ever so faint. That line under her hind left foot. How it crosses with that other groove. And another groove just like it. I do not think such carvings are found in nature. This rock…" Frank stood and looked at the spot anew, taking it all in, with different eyes than before. "This was all something once. A structure that has fallen down and been claimed by the animals." 

Theodore smiled shyly, but his eyes twinkled with knowledge, even more knowledge than Frank wagered he could ever learn. "You must be one of Professor Allenfield's students. With the expedition from Cambridge that arrived last month." 

Frank put out his hand to shake. "Yes, sir. Frank Maddox, fellowship student."

"Theodore Stephanides, at your service. And my, er, colleague here, Gerry…"

"Gerald Durrell, nice to meet you," the boy said politely. "What are you expeditioning?"

"It is an archaeological study. We are looking to document the remains of the Battle of Sybota, the greatest naval battle of the classical age until then. And the immediate catalyst for the Peloponnesian War. Very exciting stuff," Frank said, falling off in his enthusiasm towards the end.

Gerry's enthusiasm had faded with the first words of Frank's explanation. "Oh, rocks and things," he said, not deigning to mask his disinterest as he bent down to watch the frogs' feeble attempts at hopping. 

"How do you know Professor Allenfield?" Frank asked, hoping to coax Theodore to talk more, about anything, never mind his professional responsibility to explore and take measurements and jot notes. He had not felt this utterly bowled over by anyone in years, not since David. And even then, the feeling was different. More immediate, more visceral. Hotter, and not only because of the scorching Greek sun. 

"I seem to get called upon by all of the, um, visiting academics to our little island. Your professor came to tea a few weeks ago. He is very, um, _passionate_ about his particular field of study."

Frank let himself smile, hearing the very slight, though not mean-spirited teasing about Allenfield's well-known monomania. Trying to emulate that same twinkle, he replied, "Yes, he is quite focused on the topic at hand."

"But you…"

"I love this corner of the island, and am happy to study that which I find in a beautiful place." Frank shrugged.

"A bit like us naturalists, I suppose," Theodore said, stroking his beard and smiling in a way Frank knew couldn't possibly mean anything, and yet his heart thrummed anyway.

What was wrong with him?

"Except he's interested in rocks and things long dead," Gerry said, thankfully snapping Frank out of it.

Frank looked at and remembered his own boyhood, so much colder and wetter than the one this child must have been enjoying. And yet, scugs were scugs the world round. Frank had once been such a one, and had loved many more. 

Between these memories, and the ridiculous contrast of Theodore's elegant tailoring against the bedraggled net that stuck out at an odd angle behind him, Frank found himself opening up perhaps more than he intended to. He had no business sharing his private flights of ridiculous fancy with complete strangers, but those blue eyes were so encouraging. "To tell you the truth, I keep coming to this side of the island in hopes of finding Medea's Cave."

"What's that?" Gerry asked, seeming interested in something other than grubby animals for the first time. 

"The craggy sea cove where Medea finally wed her beloved Jason—of the Argonauts—for whose love she had sacrificed so much," Frank answered. He continued on in that vein, telling the story with the richness of detail that made it, and all classical myths, really, his favorite tale. 

Theodore leaned against a tree and listened with interest, never taking his eyes off Frank, not even when he reached into his walking bag to take out a little stone bottle of ginger beer. Even Gerry seemed swayed by the tale, sitting back on his heels, never mind the mud streaked across his forehead, and listened with interest.

"I know of some caves on the other side of the island that sound like what you're talking about. You know, Theodore," Gerry said, turning to his mentor for corroboration, "by our other house."

"Yes, I know the ones. Very, er, romantic, spots," Theodore said after a big gulp.

"We could take you."

Frank longed to go, to throw himself into the eccentric adventure they promised, but the damned frog-covered former pillar was still there. "I should… I would be remiss not to record these findings for Allenfield. I should alert the group to the fact that there is more here to be found." Frank sighed. "Yes, I should work."

"I would offer our help, but I doubt even the three of us could do much. And there is no rush. This has lain here for two thousand years. It can lie another few days. Besides, it is almost teatime." To enunciate the statement, Theodore's stomach growled. 

"You should come to tea with us. At my house," Gerry announced, with the olive branch of immediate, decisive and lifelong friendship that only boys can extend; the Medea story must have confirmed to him that Frank was entirely 'all right'. "It isn't far. Actually, you should stay the night, and then tomorrow we can come back and do your cataloging or whatever it is. And I can take you in the Bootle Bum-Trinket to see the caves."

"In the _what_?" Frank gasped, scandalized and absolutely mortified.

"It's the name of my boat," Gerry said innocently.

"You have your own boat?" Frank asked, in lieu of the very many questions he certainly would not ask.

"A very, erm, _stately_ vessel," Theodore added. "I was there for its christening. Although, instead of champagne broken and poured on its side, it was more that, well, _I_ poured the contents of my stomach. But she sailed as proudly as any yacht."

Frank bit his lip in an effort not to laugh. "Are you certain you're allowed to invite strangers to tea?"

Gerry shrugged. My brother invites people to stay for _weeks_. I should be allowed to invite people to tea and a single night."

"I couldn't possibly. On such short notice. And I'm sure you haven't the room." Frank looked at Theodore for support or guidance in how to proceed.

"Last week there were only, um, three other guests in residence. That would leave two additional rooms, eh, Gerry?"

"The Countess left yesterday, so there are three! Come along." With one last look at the frogs, Gerry dragged Frank down the rocks and to the soft grasses that led back to the road. But within seconds, he and the dog, who had waited patiently all this while at the foot of the hill, had gone running off ahead to chase butterflies, leaving Frank to walk sedately with Theodore. 

"Are you certain it'll be all right? Showing up to a strange house for tea like this?" 

"Once you meet Gerry's family, you'll, um, see that an addition won't phase them in the slightest. Gerry's brother once invited, a, you know, entire marching band to tea. He saw them playing in the town square near their old house, and well, _drummed_ them into accepting the invitation. They didn't speak a word of English, and gave their orders by sounding them out on their instruments. A trumpet groan for a scone, and a tinkling xylophone for more tea."

Theodore smiled at his own terrible puns, so endearingly that Frank could not help but smile, too. For someone so wonderful, so immediately impressive, he was an awful sap. Frank adored it. 

"You're joking, you must be."

"No, it's all quite true. You'll be a quite, well, sedate guest, by comparison."

They walked a little farther, exchanging the sorts of introductory pleasantries about which any well-bred gentleman such as themselves could converse in their sleep. About Frank's work with Allenfield, about the journey over, about Frank's family's estate in Provence. It came to light that Theodore had once even visited the town next-door, on some sort of state trip through France for the Greek government. Slowly, as it must with someone so humble and self-effacing, Frank gleaned that Theodore was a man of considerable renown, and he felt rather honored to command so much of his attention. 

"Here we are," Theodore whispered as they entered the gate of a gloriously beautiful, atmospherically tumbledown estate, as close to Gothic as anything on this open-hearted, sun-drenched island could be. The gardens had grown over everything, causing a riot of greens and yellows, all contrasting with the sea at the other side of the house. 

Frank was in love, and, although he was sure it was rude, had made up his mind to spend the night.

" _This_ is where we are taking tea?"

"Yes, and it is a very delicious tea. By the by, it will be all right, you know."

"What will?"

"Whatever was in the letter you were reading before we happened upon you. I have seen a look like that before. I have felt it myself. Whatever it is, _whoever_ it is who caused it… It will pass." 

Frank had entirely forgotten about David in the past hour or so. In seven years, his friend had never been as far from his mind as he had just been. He looked at the envelope, the crumpled edge of which still stuck out of the corner of his bag. He looked up at Theodore, whose firm brown hand brushed against his as they walked, and whose shy little smile said things Frank had not let himself hear or listen to in many years.

"You know, I think it might."

"Would you enjoy, er, watching the float planes land with me after tea? They usually come by at about five o'clock. It is… it is quite a sight."

Eccentric as the unexpected request was, Frank thrilled to hear it, as well as the undertone of something _more_ in his voice—something more than simply watching a plane land. "I should like to very much," he replied, hoping, then worrying, then hoping again, all in a muddle that something more had come through in his reply.

As they neared the house, Frank saw a tiny woman whose brown hair was covered in flour emerge from the house. "There you are! I was beginning to worry."

Above, on the second story, someone came out onto the Juliet balcony, and shouted, "Wonder upon wonders. The boy has actually brought something human home! Other than Theodore, of course. We shall have to see about his head. Or perhaps he's been captured by bodysnatch—" He stopped himself and bent forward to look more closely at Frank, Gerry's latest specimen. "Good god… Is that you, Maddox?"

Frank peered, too, and then froze below the balcony, aghast. "Lawrence? What on earth are you doing here?"

With the masterfully ridiculous tone Frank remembered all too well from his first year at Marchester, and framed majestically in the archway of his mansion, Lawrence replied, "I live here. What about you?"

Frank now saw it all. _This_ was the brother who kept inviting guests to stay. Lawrence Durrell, the study-mate of the boy for whom Frank had fagged in his first year at Marchester. 

"Your brother and Theodore invited me," he shouted up. 

"He would," Lawrence replied, but he seemed rather pleased. "It'll be nice to have some actual help for tea for once. You haven't forgotten all the old tricks of serving have you?"

"You aren't actually trying to rope Gerry and Theodore's friend into some sort of service, are you?" the woman, who must have been their mother, replied. 

"He used to be my fag. Or very near, at any rate."

"Larry! Language! What on earth…" She made her way over to Frank. "I apologize for my son, but if you've met him before, you must know there's very little I can do with him."

"Frank's also staying the night," Gerry piped up, back with butterflies in a little case.

"Oh, is he? Well, of course, there's plenty of room. And, finally, a nice _English_ guest. I'm so delighted," she said, talking herself into what sounded like genuine relief about a guest who had been dropped on her with no notice. "What was your name again? 

"Frank Maddox, ma'am. Thank you very much for having me, Mrs Durrell." 

"It's really quite lucky. I made entirely too much, because of course no one _told_ me that we were losing a guest this morning. Not that I know I'd call it losing… Anyway, there is too much and I'm glad of a nice, strapping young man to help us eat it all." 

Frank looked back at Theodore who was watching them together, with all the agreement in his gaze about Mrs Durrell's assessment of Frank.

He entered the house with eagerness for whatever the next twenty-four hours would bring, and didn't even notice that David's letter blew out of his half-opened bag, flipping in the wind towards the sea.


End file.
